John Baer - The Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 5, No. 5 — August 1922)

The man seemed to be gloating a little over the agony of his prospective victim. Mike, struggling to massage his leg into some semblance of life and to make no noise in doing so, heard the infinitely faint sound of the bound man struggling upon the floor. He made a curious moan, utterly despairing.

“Just one more trip, Jack,” said the voice, filled with a terrifying amusement. “Then I’ll come back for you.”

Mike’s throat was dry. He feared that man he had not seen; feared him with the ultimate of terror. And in a moment or two more he would have to fight him, struggle with him.

Cold to the marrow, dry-lipped with fear, his little eyes staring, Mike started to raise himself to his feet as he heard the other man enter the vault. His leg was numb. It would barely hold his weight up. Mike’s teeth began to chatter. He heard the man rummaging about inside the steel tomb. And then Mike felt a sudden agonizing pain in his back. Something jabbed cruelly into his backbone, hurting horribly. And then, with a spitting flash of bluish light, the pain ceased. But outside, there was a sudden rumbling and a cushioned crash. Then a distant, muffled scream, barely audible.

Glassy-eyed with terror, Mike flung open the door, to run. He saw a small electric lantern upon the floor, its beam directed at the two huge doors of the vault. And they were closed!

In the fraction of an instant Mike knew what had happened. Rising, in the closet, he had jammed his back into the knife-switch that turned on the current for the burglar-trap. It had closed the doors, imprisoning the unknown Saunders in the air-tight vault. And he, the imprisoned man, had cut the wires that would have warned the police of his predicament.

Uttering a little gasp that was compounded of horror and fear, Mike started forward, only to have his numbed leg give way beneath him. The fall sobered him to a curious, fictitious calmness. He flashed his lamp on the bound, still figure. Its eyes were closed. The face was utterly white.

“Fainted,” said Mike to himself, shakily. “Safe enough, though...”

He suddenly scrambled to his feet again and ran. Through the dark hallways and down the steps he fled. He was possessed by an unreasoning terror. The window through which he had entered was open. Evidently the other man had arranged it for his own ingress. Mike fairly fell outside, and suddenly was in complete possession of himself again. With the quiet, dark night all around him, he felt secure, and he abruptly became conscious that he was carrying something in one hand. He had picked it up when his leg gave way.

He let a faint ray trickle through his fingers upon it. Then he grinned uncertainly. Evidently he had happened upon a portion of the payroll. He saw yellow backs, at any rate, with the bills in the bundle he held.

“M-my Gawd,” said Mike, unevenly. “That was a shock. There’ve been shocks all around tonight. That feller in the vault... An’ the feller that fainted... Say” — a thought struck him — “wonder if he’ll come out of that faint in time to tell about a feller bein’ in th’ vault. M-my Gawd! Maybe he don’t know!”

He looked back through the window he had left, his breath coming hurriedly, uneasily. He saw a faint glow a long distance away. The watchman was making his rounds again. Mike saw the confident, assured steps of the man by the light of his lantern. His legs threw monstrous shadows on the walls. He went on his way unhurriedly, reached a time-clock and extracted a key. He inserted and turned it, registering his presence and vigilance upon a strip of paper inside the mechanism. Then, casually, he went on his way.

“Brother,” Mike apostrophized the unconscious figure, “I just hadda shock. Two other fellers had their shocks. An’ now, ol’ top, you’re in for yours. Here’s hopin’.”

The watchman turned a corner and was lost to sight, but his steady, even footsteps came dully to Mike’s ears. He was climbing the stairs, and he wore squeaky shoes.

Mike slipped quickly and quietly away.

Of the thousands of dentists in the city, Detective Carr chose to visit Dr. Raymond K. Perry on East Forty-eighth Street. A friend had recommended Dr. Perry; that was the only reason for the detective’s choice.

The doctor was a small, bald, roundish, amiable gentleman with a pleasing personality. “Harmless” was the word which immediately occurred to you the first time you saw him. Nevertheless, the detective’s eyes contracted rather sharply when he shook hands with the doctor. And a momentary expression of mingled doubt and surprise clouded his face. But he resumed his nonchalance immediately.

The detective’s teeth were in a very bad condition. He had several cavities and a mild case of pyorrhea. The doctor made an examination and took an X-ray photograph. An appointment for two days later was made.

The intervening day was an extraordinarily busy one for Detective Carr. He spent the time running down the history and official record of the Kirven murder case, a crime which had been committed some ten months previously. The details of this case, with which he renewed his acquaintance, may be summed up briefly as follows:

At about ten-thirty in the morning Mr. Kirven was found dead in his room with his throat cut from ear to ear. A blood-stained razor was lying beside him. The body was discovered by his housekeeper, who had come to his house to do the cleaning.

That it was murder was plain, for there were signs of a furious struggle. Nor did the identity of the murderer remain long a mystery. William Lesser, the business partner of Mr. Kirven, disappeared, and for apparent reasons.

The books of the firm of Kirven & Lesser, brokers, appeared at first to be in good order. But an investigation revealed that several transactions involving large amounts had not been recorded. Bonds and securities which had been intrusted to Lesser by the firm’s clients never reached the bookkeepers for entry. It was estimated that Lesser had absconded with some two hundred thousand dollars.

The direct cause of the murder was not known, but it was assumed that Kirven had discovered his partner’s treachery, had accused or perhaps threatened him and had thus brought on a quarrel.

The police, in tracing Lesser’s history, discovered that three years previous to the crime he had entered Kirven’s office as a clerk. He made good so quickly that Mr. Kirven took him into partnership. No clue to any fact of Lesser’s life before he entered the employ of Mr. Kirven could be found.

The heirs of Mr. Kirven, a sister and a nephew, offered a reward of five hundred dollars for the capture of Lesser. But months of zealous searching bore no result. The police had only an old photograph (found among Mr. Kirven’s effects) and the descriptions given by employes and clients to guide them. After several months, official interest in the case smouldered and finally lapsed altogether.

Detective Carr was one of the department’s famous camera-eye men. No disguise had as yet fooled him. He was able to penetrate almost immediately any artificial changes of appearance. He had never met the missing Lesser personally, but he had, of course, seen the pictures which had been published in the papers.

His first glance had convinced him that the man who was running a dental office on Forty-eighth Street under the name of Dr. Perry was the man who had disappeared under the name of Lesser.

And this in spite of the fact that Dr. Perry’s appearance differed from Mr. Lesser’s in several important respects. Lesser, to judge by his picture and the descriptions of him, was a man about five feet six in height, normal weight, clean shaven, light complected, with a thick crop of blond hair.